Navigating the Forest Rights Act: The Key Implementing Authorities

India is home to an estimated 150 million forest-dwelling people spread across roughly 1,70,000 villages. For generations, these communities – Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers – lived in and depended on forests, yet had no formal legal recognition of their rights over that land. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, commonly called the Forest Rights Act (FRA), was enacted to correct this historical injustice. But recognizing rights on paper is only half the story. The real challenge lies in implementation – and that is where the Act’s carefully structured hierarchy of implementing authorities comes in.

Why a structured hierarchy matters 🔗

Section 6 of the Forest Rights Act lays out a clear, multi-tiered framework for recognizing and vesting forest rights. The hierarchy runs from the village-level Gram Sabha at the bottom to the State Level Monitoring Committee at the top. This structure is deliberately bottom-up: it places decision-making power closest to the people most affected, while building in layers of oversight and accountability. Each tier has a defined role, and no single authority can unilaterally decide the fate of a forest rights claim.

The Gram Sabha: where it all begins 🔗

The Gram Sabha is the foundation of the entire process. Under Section 6(1) of the Act, the Gram Sabha is the designated authority to initiate the process of determining the nature and extent of forest rights within its jurisdiction. It does this by receiving claims from individual and community claimants, consolidating and verifying them, and preparing a map that delineates the area of each recommended claim. After this verification, the Gram Sabha passes a resolution and forwards it to the Sub-Divisional Level Committee.

The significance of this role cannot be overstated. The Gram Sabha is vested with the authority to initiate the forest rights process as a deliberate move to decentralise forest governance – shifting power away from colonial-era forest bureaucracies and into the hands of local communities. The Gram Sabha also has the authority to recommend developmental projects that involve diversion of forest land, such as those requiring the felling of up to 75 trees per hectare under Section 3(2) of the Act.

The Forest Rights Committee: the Gram Sabha’s working arm 🔗

The Gram Sabha does not carry out field-level verification on its own. For this, it elects a Forest Rights Committee (FRC) from among its members. The FRC must have at least two-thirds of its members from Scheduled Tribes and at least one-third women. The FRC receives claims, conducts on-site visits to physically verify them, collects supporting evidence, and prepares a map marking the claimed area. It then submits its observations and recommendations back to the Gram Sabha, which considers the findings before passing a formal resolution. The FRC is, in essence, the investigative and verification body that does the ground-level work on behalf of the village assembly.

The Sub-Divisional Level Committee: first review and first appeal 🔗

Once the Gram Sabha passes a resolution, it is forwarded to the Sub-Divisional Level Committee (SDLC). Under Section 6(3), the State Government constitutes the SDLC to examine the Gram Sabha’s resolution, prepare a record of forest rights, and forward it through the Sub-Divisional Officer to the District Level Committee for a final decision.

The SDLC is headed by the Sub-Divisional Officer, along with a Forest Officer in charge of the sub-division, three members of the block/tehsil-level Panchayat nominated by the District Panchayat, and an officer from the Tribal Welfare or Tribal Affairs department. In municipal areas not covered by the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, the three Panchayati Raj members are replaced by three members nominated by the relevant municipalities.

The SDLC performs two distinct functions. First, it serves as the primary reviewing body – it collates all maps and resolutions received from different Gram Sabhas within its sub-division, scrutinizes the evidence, and prepares a consolidated record of forest rights for onward transmission to the District Level Committee. Second, the SDLC functions as the first appellate authority, meaning any person who disputes a claim can approach the SDLC for redressal. If the SDLC finds a Gram Sabha resolution to be incomplete, it can remand the claim back for reconsideration rather than outright rejecting it.

The District Level Committee: the final decision-maker 🔗

The District Level Committee (DLC) occupies the most decisive role in the entire recognition process. The DLC is the final authority to approve claims related to forest rights, and its decision on a record of forest rights is binding.

The DLC comprises the District Collector, the Divisional Forest Officer or Deputy Conservator of Forests, three members of the District Panchayat nominated by the District Panchayat, and an officer of the Tribal Welfare or Tribal Affairs department for the district. Like the SDLC, in municipal areas not under the Sixth Schedule, the Panchayat members are substituted with representatives from Town Panchayats, Municipal Councils, or Municipal Corporations.

In terms of functions, the DLC does more than simply rubber-stamp what the SDLC sends up. The DLC is mandated to ensure that all claims – particularly those of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), pastoralists, and nomadic tribes – have been adequately addressed keeping in mind the objectives of the Act. Once claims are approved, the DLC issues directions for incorporating the recognized rights into relevant government records and ensures publication. It also provides certified copies of claim records and titles to both the claimants and their respective Gram Sabhas. Where a record appears incomplete, the DLC can remand it back to the Gram Sabha rather than modify or reject it.

The DLC’s role regarding vulnerable communities 🔗

The DLC carries a special responsibility toward the most vulnerable forest-dwelling communities. The DLC is expected to play a proactive role in initiating the rights recognition process for PVTGs in consultation with their traditional institutions and ensure their claims for habitat rights are filed before the relevant Gram Sabha. This proactive function is important because PVTGs are often the least equipped to navigate bureaucratic claim processes on their own.

The State Level Monitoring Committee: oversight at the top 🔗

Above all the field-level committees sits the State Level Monitoring Committee (SLMC). Section 6(7) of the Act mandates the State Government to constitute the SLMC to monitor the process of recognition and vesting of forest rights and to submit returns and reports to the nodal agency as may be required.

The SLMC is constituted with the Chief Secretary, secretaries of the departments of Revenue, Tribal Affairs, Social Welfare, Forests, and Panchayati Raj; the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests; three Scheduled Tribes members of the Tribes Advisory Council (or three ST members nominated by the State Government if no such Council exists); and the Commissioner of Tribal Welfare as Member Secretary.

The functions of the SLMC under Rule 10 of the FRA Rules include devising criteria and indicators for monitoring the forest rights recognition process, overseeing the overall progress of verification and vesting of rights across the state, and submitting reports to the nodal agency – which is the Ministry of Tribal Affairs at the Central level. Crucially, the SLMC is also vested with the authority to take action against any authority that violates the provisions of the Act, giving it real enforcement teeth beyond merely monitoring paperwork.

How the hierarchy works together 🔗

The four-tier framework – Gram Sabha and FRC at the village level, SDLC at the sub-divisional level, DLC at the district level, and SLMC at the state level – is designed to function as a collaborative, checks-and-balances system. The implementation follows a bottom-up route where Gram Sabhas receive, consolidate, and verify claims and forward recommendations upward for validation, with each higher authority reviewing, correcting, and finally approving before the state monitors the whole process.

Each committee under the Act – from the SDLC to the SLMC – consists of three government officials drawn from the Revenue, Forest, and Tribal Affairs departments of the State Government, and three elected members of the local body at the respective level, of whom two must be Scheduled Tribe members and at least one must be a woman. This mixed composition is intentional: it ensures that government expertise and community representation coexist in decision-making, and that the process is not monopolized by any single department – particularly the forest bureaucracy.

Implementation gaps and the gap between design and reality 🔗

The framework is well-designed on paper, but its execution has faced persistent challenges. District and forest officials tend to practice a top-down approach where they exercise more power than the Gram Sabha, undermining the Act’s bottom-up intent. The SDLC and DLC have, in many states, been reported as inadequately supporting Gram Sabhas and FRCs in the tasks of claim-making, verification, and mapping. As a result, cumulatively till May 2025, out of over 51 lakh claims filed at Gram Sabha level, only about 49% have resulted in distributed titles – leaving a substantial portion pending or rejected.

The SDLC and DLC are also not widely known to tribal communities on the ground. Many claimants interact primarily with the Tribal Welfare Department and are unaware that they have a right to appeal to the SDLC or that the DLC is the final approving authority. Awareness gaps, procedural errors by officials, and the imposition of conditions not required under the Act have all contributed to wrongful rejections, especially for Community Forest Rights and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers’ claims.

That said, the legal architecture remains sound. The three-committee structure outside the village level, combined with a monitoring body empowered to act against violations, creates a system with both horizontal accountability (multiple departments must agree) and vertical accountability (the state can take action against errant officials). The challenge is ensuring the system operates as designed, not as a bureaucratic exercise where Gram Sabha resolutions become formalities.

What do you think? Given that the Gram Sabha is the entry point for all forest rights claims but often lacks resources and awareness to exercise its powers fully, what structural changes could make the Forest Rights Committee more effective in practice? And should there be an independent grievance mechanism outside the DLC for claimants whose rights are repeatedly rejected at the district level?

References

1. https://idronline.org/features/rights/idr-explains-forest-rights-act-fra/
2. https://indiankanoon.org/doc/264201/
3. https://pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=108317
4. https://practiceconnect.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/governance-mechanisms-in-the-forest-rights-act-2006-a-review/
5. https://www.ijnrd.org/papers/IJNRD2309108.pdf
6. https://tribal.nic.in/downloads/FRA/FRAActnRulesBook.pdf
7. https://forestrights.nic.in/pdf/FAQ.pdf
8. https://vajiramandravi.com/current-affairs/forest-rights-act/